Nov 21, 2015 | TMcveigh | 1827 views
Tournament News
SILVER STICK Tournament News – November 15th
This will be the CYGHA’s 17th straight year of running the Silver Stick tournament but after having only one U.S. team entry last year, we knew we were at the crossroads with the tournament and had some work to do if our Association was going to be able to continue the tournament and honour the original intent of promoting international goodwill between the U.S. and Canada. We sought advice from our cohorts at the International Silver Stick AGM, educated ourselves on the current state of girls hockey in the USA, and then reached out to numerous hockey Associations in the USA to promote the tournament and solicit participation. These initiatives have paid off and we are beyond pleased to have 6 U.S. teams competing in two of the 14U/Bantam divisions at this year’s tournament. The 3 teams competing in the Bantam AA division will be the Syracuse Nationals, Pittsburgh Pens Elite Girls, and St. Louis Lady Blues while the 3 teams competing in the Bantam BB division will be the San Jose Lady Sharks, Colorado Lady Roughriders, and Syracuse Nationals. The Sharks and the Roughriders come to us via the Silver Stick Western Regional where they were the winner and runner up respectively.
The participation of U.S. teams at the Atom level is more of a challenge as there aren’t enough 10U teams that can play at the AA, A, or BB levels right now. In the meantime, local registration for the Atom AA division is strong while the A and BB divisions are typically sluggish at this time of year.
We are encouraged by the response of U.S. teams to the tournament this year and the quality and variety of Ontario teams attending as well. For us, this is a great first step in rebuilding the Silver Stick tournament back to it’s former glory and we thank all the teams that have chosen to join us over the weekend of Feb. 5-7 in Aurora.
Mike Shields
President, Central York Girls Hockey Association